Telecommuting refers to work being done at locations other than a central location. Telecommuters are typically knowledge workers who work primarily on tasks which require mental or intellectual activity, rather than on tasks which require physical or capital intensive work at a central location. Many Telecommuters use personal computers at their remote work site. One of the biggest obstacles to implementation of telecommuting is that managers would not be able to tell if their telecommuting employees were actually working. Another obstacle is the problem of how to measure the productivity of telecommuting employees. A manager needs to trust that a telecommuting employee is working and trust is developed through quality communications between the central site and the remotely located telecommuting worker.
Professional knowledge workers, such as computer programmers, bill their time for work done on their computers. The problem of how to monitor their time and activities on their computer, as well as how to automatically calculate the cost of these activities for accounting purposes, needs to be solved. Many invoicing systems rely on the manual inputting of the billable time and a technique is required to determine the accuracy of that billed time. In the custom software programming business, specifications often change so that more time is expended than is originally projected and a customer needs to receive accurate documentation for additional time to be billed.
A Directive issued by President Clinton on Jul. 11, 1994 on family-friendly work arrangements addressed the subject of expanding family-friendly work arrangements in the executive branch of the U.S. Government. The head of each executive department or agency was directed to establish a program to encourage and support the expansion of flexible family-friendly work arrangements, including: job sharing; career part-time employment; alternative work schedules; telecommuting and satellite work locations. All necessary steps were to be taken to support and encourage the expanded implementation of flexible work arrangements to achieve the goals of the directive.
Telecommuting would have a significant impact on reduction of air pollution. AT&T has estimated that an average employee spends 70 minutes a day commuting and generates 43 pounds of pollution a day. If two million commuters, which is less than 3% of the United States work force, telecommuted, 43,000 tons of pollution would be eliminated every day. The California's Southern Coast Air Quality Management District estimated the annual pollution from cars in 1991 to be 2,064,000 tons of pollutants.
Telecommuting provides a number of benefits. Productivity increase of 10%-20% can be expected. Turnover rates and related new employee recruitment and training costs are reduced. Management by objective rather than management by process is fostered. Specialists for a particular task can be recruited, regardless of geographic location. Organizations can be flexibly organized with faster response times and improved employee morale. Telecommuters can provide greater participation by users in their local activities. A cleaner environment and an increased ability to meet state and federal clean air and employee commuting reduction programs can be provided. The consumption of energy and dependence on fossil fuels is decreased.
Several important business economic concerns are all positively affected by telecommuting, including: maintaining or increasing productivity; decreasing office space needs; attracting or retaining critical skills among the staff; and compliance with air quality or other environmental regulations.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,305,238 dated Apr. 19, 1994, granted to Starr et al. for "Data Input Monitor and Indicator For Managing Work Pace and Rest Periods" discloses a data input monitor for use with a computer keyboard, which measures the amount of data entered into a computer and establishes rest periods based on the measured data input. This patent counts keystrokes but does not provide an indication of what work is accomplished or what projects are being worked on.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,819,162 dated Apr. 4, 1989, granted to Webb et al. for "Time Clock System Including Scheduling Payroll and Productivity Analysis Capability" discloses a computerized time clock system, which includes a personal computer via which employee, job, and schedule records may be assembled and maintained. This system records only time-in and time-out transactions and does not provide for user-defined data collection and analysis of time expended and work accomplished.
Thus, a need exists for a technique for selectively and automatically measuring the actual amount of work done on various projects on a computer by an operator such as a telecommuter.